Telephone answering machines have been provided which are capable of responding to ring signals received over a telephone line, and for effectively answering the call represented by the ring signals. This is achieved by the machine causing a recorded announcement message to be transmitted over the telephone line to the calling party, after which the calling party has an opportunity to record his message on a magnetic message recording tape in the answering machine.
A problem which has been encountered in the past is that of providing a telephone answering machine which is capable of answering calls received over more than one telephone line. A machine which has the ability of answering more than one telephone line is of a definite advantage, since it usually is not economical to provide a separate answering machine for each telephone line. Because of this, complex switching arrangements have been promulgated in the past for enabling a single telephone answering machine to answer more than one telephone line. However, these prior art coupling systems have proven to be excessively complex and expensive.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,679,831 which issued July 25, 1972, and which has been assigned to the present Assignee, discloses and claims one type of multi-line coupling system, and which enables a single telephone answering machine to be used in conjunction with more than one telephone line. However, the coupling system disclosed in the patent requires rather extensive changes to be made to the telephone answering machine itself.
The primary objective of the present invention is to provide a simple and inexpensive adapter circuit and system which may be used to couple a telephone answering machine to more than one telephone line, and which requires a minimum amount of modification, if any, to the telephone answering machine itself.